WHAT’S A GOOD DEFENSE FOR THE OPPOSITION OF THE HEALTH CARE BILL, WHEN LIBS COMPARE IT TO CAR INSURANCE?

Insurance is best for unlikely but catastrophic expenses like car crashes. You don’t expect to have to use car insurance during the year and the vast majority of drivers don’t. On the other hand, if you have an accident and, God forbid, there are any injuries, the expenses can be very very high, beyond the ability of most people to pay out of their normal incomes.

Health insurance, on the other hand, is used for things that, not only do we expect to happen on a relatively frequent basis (doctor’s office visits, pharmacies, etc.) but are predictable and relatively inexpensive (ask your doctor what the cost would be if you paid for your services in full at the time of service). Certainly there are very expensive things that can happen in health care but they don’t happen frequently. Catastrophic health care insurance is about the only thing that is truly comparable in any way to car insurance and if they want to demand that kind of coverage I could support that. Covering everything and making decisions about how and when we should get care is something I don’t see as a rational approach.

I note from the above that many people use the argument that they don’t need a car. While true that is a cop out argument, the real argument lies in the underlying economic rationale for insurance which is a pooling of risk for unlikely but expensive occurences. Health care “insurance” goes beyond that type of coverage and is therefore not justified by the same argument as that used for car insurance.

I also note that several liberals have taken shots at this by saying that they don’t use this argument to support health care reform. Fine, but recognize that other supporters of the legislation do use that argument and answer the question.